


The Best Thing We Do

by burglebezzlement



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Tracy Lives, Background canon pairings, Cancer, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fix-It, Slice of Life, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, mentions of nausea/vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-23 00:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10708761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: 25 years of Ted and Tracy, and what Ted Mosby will do to not miss a single second of their lives together.





	1. Three Emails

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unforgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unforgotten/gifts).



> For Unforgotten: I was delighted to get a chance to write your HIMYM request! I should note that are a couple nods to your previous HIMYM fic -- specifically, Ted trying to convince Tracy to give their daughter the name Leia, and the way Ted completely rearranged his life to stay in New York after meeting Tracy.
> 
> Content note: Tracy's cancer is mentioned in other chapters, but those wishing to avoid most of the cancer content can do so by skipping Chapter 2. 
> 
> Title is a reference to one of Ted's lines in the finale: "Love is the best thing we do."

The first email arrives when Tracy’s three months pregnant with Luke. 

Ted’s trying to keep Penny corralled in the living room playpen while Tracy pukes her guts out in the bathroom. He’s always promised himself that he’s going to be a good parent, that he’s not going to let himself use his phone and Netflix as a baby-sitter… but he’s starting to wonder.

Maybe Lily has a point, he thinks, as Penny stares at the lock on the baby gate. Marvin seems to be doing just fine. Maybe just a little Netflix —

“How’s she doing?” Tracy asks, from the doorway. 

“Smart as a whip,” Ted says, and trips over the playpen gate when he gets up to help Tracy lower down onto the couch. He grabs one of the trash cans she insists on calling her puke buckets and puts it beside her.

Tracy curls up into a ball. “That one didn’t do this to me,” she says, pointing at Penny.

Ted rubs his hand over her shoulders. “I know,” he says. “What I can I do? Can I carry the kid for a few months?”

“If there were any justice in this world, you’d be getting all nine,” Tracy says. 

Ted takes it as a good sign. More words means she’s less worried about puking if she opens her mouth.

“I can get you ginger ale,” he says. “Rub your feet.”

Tracy takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Just the Zofran,” she says. “And my phone. I promised Manny I’d check in on the book.”

Ted brings the Zofran and the phone and some ginger ale and soda crackers, just in case. It’s what his mom used to give him, when he was a kid back in Cleveland. Then he has to stop Penny from getting into the crackers, and when he rescues the crackers, Penny manages to get ahold of the forbidden soda and pour it down her front.

“Maybe Zoo Blue Clues: The Blue Years is a better option,” Ted mutters, once he’s gotten Penny changed into the fourth outfit she’s worn that day.

Tracy doesn’t look up from her phone. 

Ted doesn’t interrupt, just sits down in the chair beside her. 

“Sorry,” Tracy says, once she notices he’s there. “Weird email.”

“Anything I should know about?” Ted asks. “Anyone I need to go menace?”

“Not like that,” Tracy says, and she smiles a little. Good, Ted thinks. The Zofran must be working. 

“I’ll beat up any computer nerd you need me to,” Ted says.

“It’s just some cancer screening thing,” Tracy says, and then she lies back on the couch. “Okay, Mosby. Your mouth made some foot rub promises that your hands are going to have to keep.”

* * *

Ted tries to move Luke’s stroller into a better position, but Sunday brunch in the Village has no pity for the needs of the under-three crowd and their upscale Norwegian transports. 

“Why do we keep coming here?” he asks. Penny’s demolishing a stack of French toast bigger than her head, and Ted’s ordered the special of the day, which this Sunday is daisy eggs, which always make him think of Lily and Marshall’s daughter, and artisan-crafted sage and applewood-smoked sausage and specialty toast with house-made avocado spread. It’s good, but it’s not come-in-to-the-city good. Not when there’s plenty of brunch places out in the suburbs that have parking. 

“Because,” Tracy says. She points her fork at him. “I may not be able to keep up with these young whippersnappers, but I can come out and laugh at their hangovers. It’s very important for my mommy morale.”

“Mommy morale?” 

“Shut it, Mosby.” Tracy takes another sip of her Proseco and mango mimosa. 

Penny’s very proud of feeding herself, so Ted lets her eat the French toast on her own. She eats the entire plate, covering herself in maple syrup. The bathroom’s the size of a converted mop closet, and Ted has to wedge them both in with the door open to wipe off her hands and face.

When they get back to the table, Tracy’s gently moving Luke’s stroller back and forth in the inch between their table and the next, and staring down at her phone.

Ted slides back into his seat, Penny on his lap. “Everything okay?”

Tracy stares at the phone for a moment, and then looks up at him. “Another one of those emails,” she says, and hands the phone over. 

“Cancer screening?” Ted looks at it. It looks like a spam email. Only it made it through Tracy’s spam filters.

Tracy takes the phone back from him and locks it. “McConnell women only die when the pack of wolverines they’ve been training for the Iditarod turns on them,” she says. “Everyone knows that.”

“I don’t even want to think about it,” Ted says, staring into Tracy’s eyes. 

Tracy’s quiet for a moment, holding Ted’s eyes, and then she smiles. “I promise I won’t get my wolverine pack until the kids are at least through college,” she says. 

“I’m serious,” Ted says. “Are you sure —”

“I’m fine,” Tracy says. “Just someone being weird. No reason to let it ruin brunch.”

* * *

Ted’s about to leave for a site meeting for a new project in Westport, CT when Tracy calls him over to her computer.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I just need someone else to look at this,” she says. She’s got all the files for her book pulled up, but instead of asking Ted’s opinion on a phrase or what he thinks a sentence means, she pulls up an email. 

The typeface and logos are all laid out like a typical non-profit email, but the text makes Ted freeze.

_Don’t let your life be a Gaudí: Get Checked Today_

A Gaudí. Unfinished.

Just like the GNB Building would have been, before Ted realized that he couldn’t leave his potential architectural legacy behind. Couldn’t let it — 

Ted’s never heard anybody else say that. Ever.

“You need to get checked,” he says, his hand on Tracy’s shoulder. “Just in case.” It’s not that he believes in Lily’s trusting the universe crap, but… Ted believes in signs. He’d be stupid not to.

Tracy looks up at him. “Just in case?”

“It’s probably nothing,” Ted says.


	2. The Worst Bad Time

It’s not nothing.

It’s a bullet through Ted’s heart. It’s ripping the lifeforce out of him. 

It’s a tumor. The doctors are clinical, compassionate, when they describe the size of the tumor and the type of cells. Ted is going to spend hours Googling these words, torturing himself with WebMD pages and biochemistry papers well above his high-school level biology background and obscure research projects that say that pineapple juice can cure anything. 

Tracy’s the one who holds it together in the initial appointments, who asks the questions and figures out the timeline (she has a timeline now, which is flat-out _wrong_ ). Everything’s moving too fast. 

And — the really hard part — the doctors won’t even say it’s urgent. Ted thought any tumor would require immediate surgery. But the doctors talk about _watchful waiting_ like it’s an actual option. 

If Ted has to wait six months for another set of biopsies to come back, he’s going to lose it.

He gives the Westport job to another architect at his firm, a young up-and-comer who reminds Ted of himself, sometimes. He’ll stay on as senior oversight but right now —

There’s only one project Ted can work on right now.

* * *

Ted spends the drive home from another appointment trying to figure out how to talk Tracy out of watchful waiting. He knows it’s probably selfish but he wants her to go into surgery now, to get this thing out of her now. Today, if possible.

“I need to finish the book,” Tracy says.

“What?” Ted looks over, even though he knows that eighteen percent of car accidents are caused by distracted drivers.

“Before the surgery,” Tracy says. She’s pale but she looks calm. “I need to finish the book before the surgery.”

Ted stretches his hands on the wheel. “How long?”

“Few weeks,” Tracy says. 

She’s been working on the book since she sold the idea of an accessible, pop-economics take on her thesis on international development and poverty to a publisher. She’s been expanding her research, re-writing things, making Marshall and Lily and Ted read and re-read sections to make sure they’re accessible to non-economists. (“No offense,” she told Ted. “I know economists are weird.”) 

Ted’s quiet. He doesn’t want to wait a few weeks. He doesn’t even want to wait a day. If it were up to Ted —

It’s not up to Ted. “Whatever you need,” he tells her.

She’s quiet beside him. They drive through town, stopping at the stoplight by the park with the playground where Ted taught Penny to swing. The elementary school where Penny’s going to be going in just a few years. The cupcake store where Luke said his first word, cookie. It came out like “ook” and Lily, who was with them, claimed it was just babbling, but Ted knew. 

“You okay?” Ted asks, when they turn on the road that leads to their house, and then he mentally slaps himself because obviously Tracy is not okay. Neither of them are.

“I will be,” Tracy says, with a crooked smile. “I’m making a schedule.”

* * *

Ted spends several evenings on doctor rating sites to find the absolute top surgeon in Manhattan, and then tries to find someone better. Someone who’s done more of the procedures, someone for whom it’ll be routine. It had better be routine.

While Ted’s researching every surgeon in the tri-state area, Tracy schedules the surgery for three weeks out.

“It’s a bit optimistic,” she tells Ted. “I’ll need you to do my galleys for sure.”

“Galleys?”

“The review of the copyedit,” she says. They’re lying in bed, next to one another, and Ted curls himself around her, protectively.

“Anything,” he says. He would do anything in his power. He would do things fully outside his power. “I would pull down a star for you.”

“That would destroy the entire planet,” Tracy says, very seriously. “We need to work on your romantic gestures.”

* * *

Ted wants Tracy to go in for surgery immediately, and at the same time, he wants her to wait, to put off the time when they have to face the news, good or bad, about whether the tumor’s malignant.

The time before the surgery blurs by, full of packets of surgical information and difficult phone calls and arranging for coverage for his office and Tracy’s job and every other mundane thing. It feels wrong. Ted feels like he should be able to call out “Tracy down!” and the entire world should come to a stop.

Tracy’s friend Kelly comes over to help with the kids while Tracy sits at the kitchen table with her laptop, working on the book and watching the kids play at the same time. 

One day Lily shows up at their door with what looks like half a Whole Foods, and cooks enough food to fill the chest freezer in their basement.

“Does she think we’re preparing for the apocalypse?” Tracy asks, that evening, looking through the labels. Soups, stews, casseroles — Ted didn’t know there were this many meals that could be frozen, but knowing Lily, everything will be delicious.

“You’re right,” Ted says, staring down into the freezer. “We should get a generator.”

Tracy laughs. “How did you get there, Mosby?”

Because he doesn’t want anything to happen to jeopardize her recovery. Not even a power outage. And he’s been tracking a tropical depression that shows worrying signs of turning into a tropical storm. Maybe even a hurricane.

“We should have had one a while ago,” he says.

Ted shops for a generator. He even gets someone in to trim the trees around the house, just in case the depression strengthens and decides to aim itself at New York. 

In the tropics, the depression weakens, and falls apart, and Ted’s left with only one disaster to prepare for.

* * *

Barney and Robin are halfway around the world. Ted gets a text from Barney — _that’s the worst bro_ — but nothing else, not until Ranjit shows up with his car on the morning of the surgery, 4 AM, to drive them in.

“Barney sent me,” Ranjit says, and Ted feels his eyes welling up.

Tracy hasn’t met Ranjit before. She spends the entire ride in asking him for stories about the times he’s driven Ted and Barney over the years. 

Once upon a time, Ted might have stopped her from asking for the story about that New Year’s, or the time Barney tried to kidnap Ted and fly him to Vegas.

Not now. Ted wants Tracy to know all his stories.

* * *

Out in the waiting room, Ted can’t settle, can’t stop getting up to check the status monitors, looking for the change in status that means Tracy’s out of the OR, safely in the recovery bay.

He wishes he’d let Lily and Marshall come to the hospital with him, the way they offered, but he asked them to stay home, with Penny and Luke. 

He wishes he and Tracy had had a few more years, maybe, before this came up. He wishes —

“It’s hard,” a woman says, from one of the chairs below the monitor.

Ted turns. The woman’s older, bleach-blonde hair, a hand held at her side, the way Ted sometimes holds his hand when he really wants a smoke.

“Yeah,” Ted says. He drops down into a chair a few down from her. “I wish they’d prescribe some anesthetic for the loved ones.”

The woman laughs, rough. “Who are you in here for?”

“My wife,” Ted says, without thinking, even though it’s not true. Not yet. _I need to fix that_ , he thinks. As soon as they get out of this, he and Tracy are making this official. No matter what. Hell, he’ll let Barney marry them if that’s what it takes. Getting married by Barney worked for Lily and Marshall, didn’t it?

The woman just nods. “I’m here for my dad. I should be expecting this, at his age, but it’s too soon, you know?”

“It’s always too soon,” Ted says.

They sit, quietly, until the monitor board finally shows a new status.

* * *

Ranjit drives them home, too. He looks after Tracy, half-asleep and in pain on the back seat, while Ted runs into the pharmacy down the road from their house to get the prescriptions for her pain pills filled. 

Once they’re home, Ted helps Tracy inside and gets her the pills before anything else. He’s got a whiteboard set up in the kitchen with a schedule of the pills and three different color markers (marked Ted, Tracy, and Guest) so everyone can track what she’s taken and when. 

Lily and Marshall show up, soon, with the kids, and Tracy hugs them, very carefully.

“Mommy’s going to be fine,” she tells Penny, and leans forward very gingerly to kiss the top of Luke’s head. “I just need to sleep for a while.”

Ted can’t say anything. His heart’s breaking open.

“Come on,” Marshall says. “Let’s get you two in bed. Has your daddy told you about Nessie yet?”

“Thanks, Marshall,” Ted says.

“They’re going to have sea monster nightmares,” Tracy mumbles, from the couch, once Marshall's out of the room.

“Let’s get you to bed, too,” Ted says. He holds himself still, letting Tracy be the one to set the pace when she pulls herself up from the couch. 

“Do I get a bedtime story?” Tracy asks.

Ted smiles. “Once upon a time, in the greatest city in the world, there lived a young prince named Ted Mosby.”

“No fair,” Tracy says. She’s unsteady on her feet and Ted wonders, again, what the hospital was thinking, sending her home so soon after the surgery. “I know the ending to that one.”

“No, you don’t,” Ted says.

There is no ending to that story. He refuses to think that there ever could be.

* * *

When Ted wakes up, the room’s dark. He’s lying on the living room couch with a quilt pulled across his shoulders. 

Someone’s sitting in the easy chair across the room, the one Tracy brought from her apartment, and he —

“Relax, bro.”

The voice clarifies everything. “Barney?”

Barney shifts. “We came as soon as we could. Robin’s sacked out in the guest room.”

“Tracy?”

“She’s fine,” Barney says. “Lily said you fell asleep before she did.”

Ted rubs his eyes. “I need to check on her.”

“She’s sleeping,” Barney says. “Let us take care of you. We’ve got this.”

Ted tries to stand up, but his legs feel weak. “Why are —”

“You think we’d let you guys go through something like this alone?” Barney doesn’t sound offended. “We had to get Robin’s schedule open. And then we had to find a plane. There aren’t many planes from American Samoa.”

“Right.” Ted’s head is clearing. “That report on military waste.” He scrubs a hand across his eyes. “Thanks for sending Ranjit.”

“Please,” Barney says. He waves his hand, like it’s nothing that they came halfway around the world.

They’re quiet for a moment, and then Barney clears his throat. “Lily will be back in the morning,” he says. “She and Marshall took the kids home.” He waves his hand again. “Their half of the kids. You know what I mean.”

Ted nods, and then lets himself lie back down, stretching out aching muscles and letting them relax on the cushions of the couch. Barney’s here. His friends are here.

* * *

Waiting for the pathology results reminds Ted of waiting for a package back when he was a kid, when there wasn't such a thing as package tracking yet, and the package could be in La Jolla, California or the Cincinnati airport or already in Cleveland and you’d have no information either way.

Cindy and Casey and their daughter come by one afternoon. It’s a weekend day. Ted’s lost track of the days, except that he knows the biopsy news won’t come on a weekend, which means that Saturday and Sunday feel like the longest weekend in the known universe.

It’s late autumn, but it’s warm outside. Cindy and Casey take Tracy and the kids out onto the patio, and Tracy crashes on a lounge chair while the kids run around. 

Inside, Ted throws the windows open, letting the fresh air wash through the house while he runs loads of dishes and laundry, strips all the beds, wipes down the bathroom. Luke managed to get into mud somewhere, even though it’s October, and Ted wipes down muddy fingerprints on the hallway walls and runs the vacuum and tries to focus on making something better. Focus on the things he can control, like Barney said when Robin convinced him to start going to Suits Anonymous. 

When Cindy and Casey leave, Ted walks them out to the car.

“Keep us in your thoughts,” he says, awkwardly. “Or your prayers. Or whatever.” He’s still not sure how to ask for that.

Cindy hugs Ted. “Always,” she says.

* * *

The call comes a few days later. It’s Tuesday, and the disorganized remains of a tropical depression are sweeping through town, pounding the streets with rain and low winds. Outside the windows, the trees are fuzzed by a gray blanket of rain.

Inside, Tracy and Ted are curled up on the couch, under an afghan, while Luke and Penny watch some Netflix show Ted’s never heard of. The plot seems to involve sentient pieces of fruit planning a supermarket heist. Maybe. He’s not sure.

_You’ll never take me, pineapplecopper,_ the banana character says dramatically, and then he trips forward. Penny and Luke giggle.

“I don’t get this,” Ted says. He wanted to watch the Trilogy. He longs for the days when Penny was small enough that she didn’t get to pick the show.

Tracy snuggles against him. “I know. Some people just can’t appreciate modern deconstructions of classical dramatic forms.”

“You’re kidding,” Ted says. She shrugs, and he leans in to try to check her face. “You’re kidding?”

Tracy keeps a straight face, and then dissolves into laughter. “You’re easy, Mosby.”

Ted smiles, and then pulls her closer. “Maybe you’re not wrong,” he says. “The fruit basket could represent the yearning for a new family. By casting the fruit family with unrelated fruits, the narrative chooses to position the found family above the traditional apple-and-tree relationship one normally attributes to fruits.”

On the screen, the apple character shows up, slips on the banana character, and falls down with a splorting sound effect. Penny and Luke giggle again.

“Definitely a reach,” Tracy says. She reaches out for her smoothie. “You’ll have to come up with something more convincing than that.”

“Challenge accepted,” Ted says, and he’s trying to connect the blueberry’s quest for a bigger basket to the plot of either Hamlet or Macbeth when Tracy’s phone rings.

They both freeze for a moment, and then Ted scrambles to pause the show while Tracy answers the phone and puts it on speaker. 

It’s her surgeon. Ted remembers her, from the waiting room, when they were telling him how the surgery went and making him wait before he could go back to recovery. He knows her voice. 

“Tracy McConnell?”

“Here,” Tracy says, like the surgeon’s taking attendance.

“I have your pathology results,” the surgeon says, slowly. “Are you someplace —” 

“Just tell me,” Tracy says.

Ted’s heart is in his throat. 

“The pathologist found no signs of metastasis,” the surgeon says.

Ted’s heart lifts.

“Which means —” Tracy clears her throat. “That’s the good one, right?”

“The tumor had grown considerably,” the surgeon says. “It's fortunate you didn't choose to wait. But based on the pathology on the sentinel nodes, we removed it before it had the chance to metastasize.”

Tracy looks up at Ted, and he bites his lip and tries to hold back tears before realizing that there’s no reason. “You’re going to be okay,” he whispers, looking down at her. 

“So no chemo?” Tracy asks. “No radiation?”

“We’ll want to monitor you,” the surgeon says, and then there’s a lot of conversation Ted’s not following about bloodwork and scanning schedules.

“I understand,” Tracy says, when the call winds down. “We’ll schedule the one year follow up. Thank you again. So much.”

“I’m calling the Farhampton Inn,” Ted says, as soon as Tracy hangs up. “We’re going to celebrate.”

“I’m going to be okay,” Tracy says, like it’s the first time she’s believed that since they got the initial test results. 

Ted holds her close. “You’re going to be okay,” he says, into her hair, smelling her shampoo, feeling her warm in his arms. “You’re going to be okay.”


	3. Ted & Tracy’s Excellent Adventure

99.99999999998% of time travel in the known universe takes place in a forward direction, at a rate of one second per second, one minute per minute, one year per year. 

It feels faster than that to Ted. One minute they’re planning their wedding, and the next it’s their first anniversary. He blinks, and suddenly they’re dropping Penny off at kindergarten. She’s got a new dress, and Ted takes so many pictures before they leave the house, she’s almost late to her first day of school. 

“I can walk in myself,” Penny says, her lower lip pushing out in the way Ted’s learned means he should probably let her.

Tracy crouches down to Penny’s level. “One last hug,” she says. “For luck.”

Penny looks over at the other kids, gathering at the doorway, and then back at her mother. “Fine,” she says, but Ted notices that Penny’s tiny hands hold Tracy just as hard as Tracy’s holding her.

“That’s done,” Ted says, once Penny’s safely with the rest of the students.

Tracy blinks rapidly. “I told Lily I wasn’t going to cry,” she says.

“Never tell Lily when you’re not going to cry.” Ted takes Tracy’s hand and then leads her away. “Come on. I need a drink.”

“It’s eight in the morning,” Tracy says. “You’ve got work.”

Ted does have work. He’s got prep for a client meeting tomorrow.

“I’m blowing that off,” he says. “We’re going to go hang with Luke while he’s still too small to leave us behind for the bright lights of Grove Forest Elementary.”

* * *

Tracy gets pregnant again, which neither of them expected, but both of them are thrilled by. It’s another girl. Ted knows the name Leia’s out, after the discussions they had about Penny’s name, but he almost thinks he’s got Tracy convinced to go with Mara until Tracy pulls out her own dog-eared Star Wars novels. 

“We’re not naming her after Mara Jade, either,” Tracy says. “Her brother’s namesake’s wife? Nice try, Mosby.”

Ted clutches his chest dramatically. “How could my own wife accuse me of such a plot? The Expanded Universe isn’t canon anymore!” 

“I refuse to believe I’m carrying a child for someone who could consider accepting the word of Disney on the EU.” Tracy raises one eyebrow. “Your move, Mosby.”

In the end, they name their new daughter Margaret, nickname Meg, after Tracy’s terrifyingly competent grandmother, who lives alone in Michigan at 85 and still rakes her own leaves. When Ted looks at Tracy’s grandmother, he sees the type of woman his wife is growing into, still working three shifts a week at the town’s cat rescue and baking cookies for the school bake sale and writing op-eds for the local paper.

* * *

When Meg’s three, Tracy gets offered a job at an international development NGO focused on poverty.

“The pay’s terrible,” she tells Ted that evening. The kids are fed and working on their homework (Penny), pretending to work on their homework (Luke), or running around in circles (Meg). “It’s less than we’d pay in day care.”

“Meg’s going to be going to kindergarten soon,” Ted says, trying to ignore the pang he feels at the thought. “They’re all going to be in school in a couple years.”

“Yeah, but it just seems….” Tracy waves her hands. “You know. Wasteful. I make more where I am right now.”

“Wasteful?” Ted gets up and pulls her into a hug. “You doing what you want to do with your life is the opposite of wasteful.”

Tracy’s first book was a success, and since then, she’s been writing, keeping a blog, making media appearances — it’s tough to juggle around the rest of their lives, around their jobs and their kids and their friends. 

“Do you want it?” Ted asks.

“I’d be helping develop policy,” Tracy says. “It’s not a C-suite gig or anything, but I’d have a voice in how they develop new programs.”

Ted kisses the top of her head. “You should take this,” he says.

He knows how many late nights Tracy pulls, after the kids have gone to bed. How many times she gets up early for a radio interview about poverty and global development. How much she cares.

* * *

Barney and Robin go through a rough patch, but they get through it. Barney tells everyone the reawakening in their relationship is because of a Tantric sex resort in Sedona, Arizona. Robin says it’s because they finally found a couple’s counselor who could work with them.

“I saw what Tracy getting sick did to you,” Barney says to Ted one night.

It’s summer, evening, and the kids are chasing fireflies on the lawn. Marshall’s off at some work event, so it’s Lily and Tracy and Robin giggling on the other end of the patio, drinking a pitcher of mojitos, while Barney and Ted get their brews on and keep an eye on the kids.

“Yeah?” Ted takes a pull on his beer.

Barney looks away. “I couldn’t lose her,” he says.

He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t need to. He and Ted sit together, watching as the kids chase after the fireflies, running in circles on the grass.

* * *

Tracy works her way up from policy grunt to policy grunt overseer to grand high overseer of policy. Ted builds more buildings. The kids grow, like weeds, uncontrollably, and every so often Ted looks at them and can’t believe how much bigger they are. He wishes the world would slow down.

When Meg’s nine, she decides that her name is Marge, which makes Ted think of The Simpsons and Large Marge.

“Meg is so not a normal name,” Meg says. _Marge_ , Ted reminds himself.

“And Marge is?”

Marge rolls her eyes. “Like you would know. _Dad_.”

Dad. Ted’s been called worse things.

* * *

Birthdays, anniversaries, Thanksgivings, Superbowls. It feels like no time at all, and suddenly Marvin’s off at college, and then Daisy follows him, and then it’s time for Penny and it’s all way too soon. Ted’s not ready. The entire time they’re carrying in all her stuff to her first dorm room, he’s thinking of how young she looked when they sent her off for kindergarten for the first time.

Barney throws an enormous 20-year anniversary party for himself and Robin, out at the Farhampton Inn, and the entire clan gathers. 

Penny lets herself be seen with the adults. She’s got a crush on Marvin, which Lily is excited about and Ted — “It’s okay,” Tracy tells him, once they’re back in their room that evening. “Marvin’s a stand-up guy. You know he’s not encouraging this.”

“He’d better not be,” Ted growls. Penny may be a college freshperson, but she’s still his little girl. 

Tracy pulls him down onto the hotel room bed with her and rests his head on her shoulder, under her chin. “It’s okay, Pooh Bear. We wouldn’t want her to stay five years old forever.”

Ted’s not sure about that. He’s pretty sure —

“Fine,” he says. “But she’s not staying up all night at that seance to contact Captain Dearduff.”

“There’s a seance?” Tracy sounds excited. “You’ve been holding out on me, Mosby.”

“You’re not saying you believe in ghosts,” Ted says. “Not here. Come on. It’s clearly an excuse for all the maintenance issues.”

“Maybe it’s a spooky explanation for all the maintenance issues,” Tracy insists. “Maybe ghosts really do hate hi-band internet and air conditioners. Maybe they’re jealous of all of our modern conveniences.”

“I refuse to believe,” Ted says, but he still follows her downstairs, and he’s the one who yells the loudest when Barney appears outside the window of the haunted room, dressed in full 19th-century sea captain’s gear and holding a hook in his hand.


	4. Marshall Eriksen Saves the Universe

Ted only has one question about Marshall’s latest story.

“Why did you tell Lily?”

“I tell Lily everything,” Marshall says, seriously.

“Yeah, but —” Ted stops. “Really? Time travel? And this is super-secret, and yet you told Lily.”

Marshall leans back. “The New York State Supreme Court oversees many areas of emerging research.”

They’re at MacLaren’s. Ted’s in town today, meeting with a client about a potential mixed-use skyscraper project up on East 93rd, and he called Marshall to suggest lunch. 

Most of the city feels different to Ted, with the new walls along Riverside Drive to hold back tidal flooding, and the expansion of residential towers through all the old brownstone neighborhoods. Even the once-omnipresent GNB bank branches are gone, replaced by Amazon drop-points and juice bars and animal encounter cafes.

In a changing city, MacLaren’s feels like a safe refuge. Carl’s still behind the bar, although the waitresses seem to get younger and younger each year, and the menu has rice and kale bowls now, only two decades behind the rest of the city. 

“No way,” Ted says, as the waitress drops off their kale bowls and their platter of potato skins. “No way. I don’t believe it.”

“It’s serious,” Marshall says. “I had to fill out eighteen bajillion forms and get all these shots to stop me bringing back the Madagascar Flu.”

Ted briefly thinks about what would have happened, if the Madagascar Flu had hit even a few years earlier, and shakes his head. “So what did you do? Watch the assassination of President Lincoln?”

Marshall leans in, close. “I ordered myself a plate of chicken wings,” he whispers.

“Seriously?” Ted leans back. “Dude.”

“No, really,” Marshall says, and he goes into a lawyer-speak download on the topic of time travel, paradoxes, and something called a Form 83-R.

“I’m not saying I don’t believe you,” Ted says, even though he doesn’t. “But chicken wings? Bro. _Bro._ ”

“I had to!” Marshall protests. “You can only time travel to something that already happened. It’s not like I can just travel back in time and slap Barney.” He looks off towards the bar. “Although that would be pretty awesome. Hey, do you think —”

“You had already bought yourself a plate of chicken wings?” Ted puts his head to one side. “Actually, that does sound like you.”

“They were delicious,” Marshall says. “I mean when I ate them, the first time around. Young Marshall. You remember what hot wing sauce used to taste like, before that Superbowl when —”

“Stop,” Ted says. He feels queasy just thinking about the Great Food Poisoning Incident of 2029. None of them have been able to look at a hot wing since.

“It was amazing,” Marshall says, his eyes going misty. “No kale bowls. Nobody in the entire city ate kale. Ever.”

Ted picks up his fork and digs into his kale. “Kale’s healthy,” he says.

“Sure,” Marshall says. “We used to tell ourselves that. But we took our eyes off the threat it faced, and it took over.”

“You know, you could have just ordered a burger, instead of inventing some crazy time-travel story,” Ted says now.

“I’m not making it up!” Marshall protests.

“So why chicken wings?”

“I told you.” Marshall takes one of the potato skins. “It had to be then, because I had already eaten the wings. It was back when I wrote my future self a letter. I had a date. And a memory, Ted. A memory of chicken wings.”

“So?”

“So if you don’t travel back in time to a place when you already traveled back in time, you create a paradox and you destroy the universe.”

Marshall says it like it’s obvious.

Ted shakes his head. “If you’re just trying to mess with Barney, the Slap of a Billion Suns was more convincing.”

* * *

Ted knows Marshall’s story is just a lead-up to some crazy prank. Maybe Marshall’s finally going to use one of his new slaps. (Barney really screwed up, betting five slaps for one on the outcome of The Wedding Bride Eight: Wed Hard back in 2035. Even Ted could tell that Swarley and the robo-bride were going to walk down the aisle at the end of that one.)

But Ted can’t stop thinking about Marshall’s story. He’s not even sure why, until he gets to the photos and plans for the GNB Building in his holo-folio during a prospective client presentation one day.

The GNB Building, which he didn’t leave unfinished, because he didn’t want to be like Gaudí.

It can’t be. It’s impossible.

* * *

“Weird question,” he asks Tracy that evening. 

Tracy’s home from the office and cooking dinner in their kitchen, which still looks like HGTV circa 2021 because neither of them have the heart to make it look like something else. There’s too many memories in that kitchen. When Luke tells them it’s like a time capsule, Ted excuses it by saying the style will come around again eventually. Tracy just smiles. 

Tracy flips the pieces of vat-beef she’s browning in a pot on the stove. “I’m always up for weird questions.”

“Do you remember those emails? The ones from back when you had to have surgery?”

Ted doesn’t say “from when you had cancer.” He doesn’t like thinking about it like that. He never has.

“I remember them,” Tracy says. She puts down the tongs. “Why?”

“No reason at all,” Ted says, but Tracy’s been married to him for decades now.

“Where’s the poop, Mosby?”

Ted sits down on one of the chairs at their breakfast bar. “You’re going to think I’m crazy,” he says, “but Marshall told me he traveled back in time. He claims he ordered his younger self some chicken wings.” 

“That?” Tracy picks the tongs back up. “Lily told me about the time travel, but I thought Marshall was just laying the groundwork for another slap.”

Ted shakes his head. “We need to stop telling Lily anything.”

“What does that have to do with the emails?” 

“I think I sent them,” Ted says, slowly, watching Tracy’s face as he says it.

She just holds his eyes, and then nods and turns back to the pot.

“I always thought you sent them,” she says, as she flips the vat-beef cubes around one more time. “The GNB Building. Unfinished. Who else would put a reference to Gaudí in a cancer screening email?”

“But I didn’t send them,” Ted says. “I hadn’t sent them. Only I think I need to go back and send them now.”

“Really?”

“It’s some closed loop thing,” Ted says. “I think.” He’s still kind of vague on the explanations.

“Maybe this is one of Marshall’s Mysteries of the Unexplained things,” Tracy says. “Remember the time you let him organize a family camping trip, and we had to spend the entire weekend in a swamp in Massachusetts, wiring up motion detectors and game cameras to try to catch Bigfoot?”

Ted’s been having a few of those thoughts himself, but — “I can’t take the chance,” he says. “I don’t think anyone else could have sent that email. But I didn’t send it. Which means I haven’t sent it yet. And if I don’t send it —”

He doesn’t let himself go down that road. Imagining what would have happened if they had caught the cancer even a few months later — he’s not thinking about it, he reminds himself. Tracy’s here and he refuses to lose her. Not now, not in the past.

“I just need the email,” he says, now. “To show Marshall. If he’s not setting something up, maybe whoever’s running this thing can figure out how I send it. How I sent it. You know what I mean.”

“I think you’re nuts,” Tracy says, but she’s got a fond look on her face. “You can have the email.”

“You saved it?” Ted jumps off the stool. “You’re amazing.”

Tracy smiles. “I save all your old emails. You know I need the AI development team to have as much material as possible when we upload your memories to the Cloud to create Mosby 2.0.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Ted says, like he always does, but he’s not sure. Maybe there’s worse things than letting an AI Ted spend digital eternity with an AI Tracy.

* * *

Tracy sends Ted the emails. Ted checks the header information, but he’s never been a computer guy, not really. 

He forwards them on to Marshall and tries not to think about it.

A week or two later, just about when Ted’s convinced himself he’s nuts, Marshall calls.

“Marshall?” Ted squints. He wasn’t napping. He was resting his eyes, and if he happened to have been resting his eyes on his office couch, that’s nobody’s business but his own.

“Ted!” Hologram Marshall’s eyes are wide. “Ted, are you sure?”

“I’m not sure of anything,” Ted grumbles, pushing himself upright. “What are we talking about?”

“The emails, Ted.” Marshall’s leaning forward. “When did you send them?”

“I didn’t,” Ted said. “I swear.”

“The techs ran the info,” Marshall says. “You mean you haven’t sent them yet.”

* * *

Nothing in Ted’s previous consumption of time travel movies has prepared him for the forms.

They’re all in electronic format, but Ted estimates that if they were printed out, they’d stretch from his desk to the ceiling of his study. Easily. They ask questions about things Ted hasn’t thought about for years. Where Ted used to live, where Tracy used to live, all their former offices and hangout locations. Multiple requests for people who knew Ted back in the day, none of whom can be Marshall or Lily. Ted puts down Barney and Robin, and then thinks for a bit before putting down Punchy, who’s still living in Cleveland with his wife Kelly, and Stuart, who fled his marriage to Claudia to live in a monastery in New Reclaimed Antartica.

It’s the impact forms that take Ted the most time, though.

Tracing his wife’s impact on the world? It’s staggering. Ted knew his wife was amazing — as far as Ted’s concerned, she’s the single greatest human being to ever walk the surface of this Earth. But even he’s surprised at the estimates about how many lives Tracy McConnell’s work has changed. How many children grew into adults because of her economic insights. How many people her NGO work has allowed to be lifted out of poverty. How the innovations from her NGO have spread through the aid community.

It’s humbling. She comes home one afternoon, while Ted’s working on filling out the final forms, and he just stares at her.

“Ted?” She puts down her purse next to her ukulele case. She used to bring it to the kid’s schools sometimes, when she was volunteering as a class parent. Nowadays the only kid they still have at home is Marge, who might actually die of embarrassment if her mom brought a musical instrument to her school. 

“I’m okay,” Ted says.

He really is okay. It’s just that he’s also trying to keep himself from crying. 

He knew how much she meant to him. He didn’t know how much she meant to the world.

“Marshall called earlier,” Tracy says. “He was being super-secretive.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Tracy says. “So I called Lily and she told me everything. Are you really thinking about doing this? This is crazy, Pooh Bear.”

“I’m not losing you,” Ted says.

“It’s experimental,” Tracy says. “Lily says —”

“Lily’s just jealous that Marshall won’t let her go back in time and tell herself to change Daisy’s name.”

Tracy winces, the way they all do when they remember the year Daisy spent getting tormented at school after Amazon chose “Daisy” as the default trigger phrase for their new ordering device.

“Maybe he should let her,” Tracy says. 

“It’d cause a paradox and it might —”

“Rip apart the universe. I know. Lily said. She didn’t sound happy about it, though.” 

Tracy sits down next to Ted at the table and looks down at the files Ted has open on his tablet. “Why do you have our annual report?” she asks.

“Finishing the forms,” Ted says. He clears his throat. “We’re almost ready.”

“I’m still not comfortable with you doing this,” Tracy says. “Are you sure?”

“I don’t need to be sure,” Ted says. “I already went. If I don’t go, I could cause a paradox and —”

“Destroy the universe.” Tracy shakes her head. “Why is it always about destroying the universe with you guys?”

* * *

Ted spends a Saturday afternoon with the team’s techs, digging out every old computer and phone he has in storage and letting them rip the hard drives.

When they tell him about the virus, it’s suddenly real.

They tell him it’s a cunning piece of work, designed to hide itself until the time rolls around to trigger and send exactly three emails. The emails Tracy already has.

“Now we just need to figure out when to send you back to,” Marshall says.

“It’s on my computer,” Ted says. “Does it really matter when? It just has to be before the first email, right?”

“Ted.” Marshall leans forward. “Oh, Teddy Teddy Ted.”

“What?”

“You don’t understand time travel, do you? If we send you to the wrong night, you could wake up and see yourself. Or I could see you. Or —”

“I get it,” Ted says. “So what do we do?”

“We need to find a stable point,” Marshall says. “Obviously we will figure this out, since we have evidence that a future Ted made it to the past. There should be some subtle indication, some tiny clue that tells us exactly when future Ted traveled back to —”

Ted slaps his hand on the table, the way he does when a clue in the Saturday New York Times three-dimensional holo-crossword falls into place.

“I know when,” he says.

Marshall scoffs. “You can’t possibly know when. Not already.”

“It’s the wedding,” Ted says. “Barney and Robin’s wedding.”

He should have known right away. Everything comes back to that wedding.

“I don’t buy it,” Marshall says.

“No, really. I never told you guys, but when I got back to my apartment, I found a place where I’d written Ted Was Here on the wall. Remember, under the shelf in the closet?”

“So?”

“So I didn’t remember writing it.”

* * *

Vaccinations, more forms, digging through his coin collection to find only those minted before 2013 — “It’s a good thing they’re sending a numismatist back,” Ted tells Marshall, only to have Marshall tell him he can’t bring anything but the data stick and his key. Not even the Sharpie he’ll need to write on his own wall.

* * *

Technically, Tracy and Lily aren’t supposed to know anything, so it’s Marshall who goes with Ted to the time machine.

When Ted sees the time machine, he’s disappointed. It’s just the vague outline of a door, etched into the center of the room like a shimmer in the air. No doorframe. No definition, just the place at the center of the room where the light bends strangely.

“I could make this look way more awesome,” he says to the tech, who’s fitting him with a bunch of wires, carefully, so they won’t show unless someone looks closely. At least he gets to pretend he’s a cyborg, but the gel they’re using to stick everything on him is itchy.

“They gave me those wires,” Marshall says, looking wistful. “The glue took three showers to wash out.”

“Any advice?” Ted asks.

“You’ll be fine,” Marshall says. “You already did this.”

“I could totally fix that door,” Ted says, again. “Just think how cool it’d look if you added a doorframe. Maybe with, like, a smoke machine or something.”

The tech smiles. “If you tried putting something other than air around the edges of the portal, the time instability would rip it apart,” she says. She puts more glue on Ted’s head and attaches another wire.

_Rip it apart._

“I’m not sure about this,” Ted says, grabbing Marshall’s arm. “What if I trip? What if —”

Marshall looks so calm, Ted suddenly wonders if this really is just another slap setup.

“It’s fine,” Marshall says. “You’ve got this, Ted.”

Ted keeps his hold on Marshall’s arm, and doesn’t say anything. The tech has him stand up to check all the wires and test the read-outs on the data cube they’re using to track his vitals.

It feels like they’re ready too soon. They hand him the key and the flash drive, check him over one more time for illicit tech or anachronistic clothing (like Ted’s worn anything that wouldn’t pass for 2013 since he’s been married — chalk one up for consistency). 

And then they tell him it’s time to go.

Ted smells ozone as he approaches the shimmer in the air. His heart pounds in his chest as he turns back to look at Marshall, standing across the room.

“You’ll do great,” Marshall says.

Ted nods, and turns back to the shimmer in the air. When he steps in, there’s a feeling like he’s being cut apart, and then he’s through.

* * *

**New York, 2013**

It’s exactly as Ted remembers. The smell of the air, the low brownstones close to the street along the side streets, the pedestrians thronging the sidewalk as they wander from bar to bar. People smoking actual cigarettes, the old-fashioned kind from before the Mayor banned everything but e-cigs back in 2028.

The time machine puts him through in a vacant warehouse over at the old docks on the Hudson, because the building Ted lived in in 2013 got torn down for a high-rise condo development in 2017.

His old building looks smaller than he remembers. Inside, his apartment’s all packed up, in boxes, waiting for the movers to come.

2013 Ted has so many phone calls to make.

Ted remembers it — calling Hammond Druthers to turn down the job, calling his New York firm to ask if he can come back, finding the new subletter for the Chicago apartment and finding a new apartment for the subletter he’d gotten for Quinn’s apartment, rearranging his life and the lives of everyone around him just because he’d met some girl. Some girl he hardly knew.

It’s still the best risk he ever took.

The Sharpie’s just where Ted remembers — sitting on the kitchen counter, where he was using it to label boxes 2013 Ted will put off unpacking for the next year, until he and Tracy agree to move in together in Ted’s house, out in the suburbs. 

_I thought I’d be unpacking those boxes in Chicago_ , Ted thinks, and if his eyes mist up a bit, he’s not going to tell Marshall about it. _I got to unpack them in a new life._

Upstairs, Ted turns on the computer and waits for it to boot. Once it’s on, it’s just a matter of putting in the flash drive and waiting. 

While the virus that will send the emails to save Tracy’s life loads, Ted clears away the detritus in the bedroom closet and chooses his location. Just under the shelf, where 2013 Ted will see it every morning and smile.

_Ted was here_ , Ted writes, with the Sharpie. _2013._

* * *

Back home, in 2039, Ted makes Marshall stop by the corner florist so he can buy Tracy flowers. A huge bouquet — the peonies and Stargazer lilies from their wedding, and zinnias for the flowers Ted bought her when Penny was born. Roses, yellow for friendship and pink for love and red for passion, for all the times he’s brought flowers home just because. Snapdragons for the flowers in Tracy’s garden, and asparagus fern just because he knows she loves the delicate tracery of the greenery. Flowers for all the time they’ve spent together, and the future they still have.

Ted can barely see over the arrangement when he and Marshall get back to the house. Inside, Lily and Tracy are in the kitchen, talking while something delicious-smelling simmers in a pot.

“Ted!” Tracy jumps up, leaving her wine behind on the counter. “You’re back!”

“I brought flowers,” Ted says, unnecessarily, and he has to put them down on the kitchen table before he can hug her. 

His wife. She smells like home.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Tracy mumbles into his ear. “I was worried about you, Pooh Bear.”

Ted holds her closer. He’s so glad she’s still here. 

“I wouldn’t go anywhere,” Ted says. “Not with you to come home to.”


	5. Epilogue: The End in the Beginning

**New York, 2013**

When Ted gets back to his apartment after the wedding, he dumps his luggage and then flops down across his bed. It’s just a mattress on the floor — his headboard and frame and boxspring are all downstairs, waiting for the movers to come and remake his life.

_The movers_ , he realizes. They’re coming at 8 AM tomorrow. He has to call them and call Hammond and call —

Maybe Ted should have a moment of doubt. He doesn’t.

Instead, he gets up again, opens his suitcase, and goes to the closet to grab his laundry bag. He starts stuffing things in to take down to the fold and wash the next morning. He’ll have time, in between all the phone calls.

When he goes to shut the closet door, something catches his eye. Something written in Sharpie, just under the shelf.

He leans in. _Ted Mosby was here_ , he reads.

Ted thought he’d decided against signing his name in the apartment — such a cliche. But there’s his writing, on the wall. Maybe he did it when he came home drunk, the night he decided to move. 

He smiles. Ted Mosby is here, in New York, in the greatest city in the world, and he’s just met the girl of the dreams. He’s not going anywhere. 

There isn’t a single doubt in his mind.


End file.
